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NameVar: __ ___ 1793 Brig Gen; Joseph MARTIN received the title
of
Brig. Gen. in 1793 while serving in the
12th
Virginia militia. He was appointed by
Governor
`Light Horse Harry' LEE, in response to a
call
from the Federal goverment for troops to
suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western
Pennsylvaia. Partly because of mutinies
and
desertions in the western counties
(many of
which were in sympathy with the
Pennsylvanians)
his birgade of Virginia troops arrived at
their
rendezvous point of Winchester to late to
be of
service & they were paid off and
discharged
there

Occupation* __ ___ ____ Brig Gen rank held at the same time in VA
& NC.

Anecdote* __ ___ ____ On one of Col. MARTIN'S visits to his
home
in
Henry Co, his wife Susannah (GRAVES)
MARTIN
complained to him of illtreatment she had
received from her brother. Joseph chanced
to
meed GRAVES later at a gathering of
friends,
told him of his wife's complaint, and
publicly
stated that he would overlook the offense
this
time but would whip him if it happened
again.
Enraged, GRAVES sent MARTIN a note
challenging
him to a duel early the next morning.
Joseph
appeared alone at the place at the
appointed
time and found GRAVES together with his
brother
and father waiting there. He pulled the
note
from his pocket, showed it to GRAVES and
asked
if he had sent it, and knocked him down
with a
blow when he admitted doing so, whereupon
the
two GRAVES boys and their father took to
their
heels, leaving the field to the Colonel.

Anecdote: __ ___ ____ On one occasion a wounded enemy Indian
was
tracted to a cave in which he took refuge,
armed
with a rifle, Joseph entered the cave
alone
and
in the darkness located the Indian, killed
him,
and brought the body to the surface.
Another
time, a British agent among the hostile
Chicamauga branch of the Cherokees sent a
party
of 90 warriors out to assassinate Col.
MARTIN,
one of the group going out ahead to shoot
him
from ambush if possible. This Indian,
after
unexpectedly coming facetoface with
MARTIN,
prudently returned to his companions and
gave
this report to their leader: "If you want
Col.
MARTIN killed, go do it yourself. He looks
just
dreadful." The whole party then returned
home.
On one of Col. MARTIN'S expeditions
against
the
Chicamauga his provisions ran low. He
managed to
get word to Nancy WARD, who sent out
several
beefs under Indian escort. A part of
Sevier's
troops came across the beefs, pretended
they
were theirs, and slaughtered them for
their
own
use. Joseph learned of this, drew his
sword,
rode at the head of his men to the place
where
Sevier's party was camped, and forceably
recovered his beef. When two of his men
were
imprisoned by a superior officer for some
minor
offense he took matters into his own
hands,
rode
up with his troops and released them.
Apparently
no notice was taken of this
insubordination
but
it greatly increased his reputation among
his
men.
"General Joseph MARTIN made an invaluable
and
little publicized contribution to the
cause
of
the United States during his service on
the
frontier. It is doubtful if the Revolution
could
have succeeded without his influence
amoung
the
Cherokees. The British strategy to subdue
the
Colonies was to land an army in West
Flordia,
strike north through the Creek, Choctaw,
and
Cherokee country, recrutiting an army of
warriors as they marched, and take
Georgia,
the
Carolinas, and Virginia from the rear,
pounding
them into submission against a second army
of
redcoats to be landed simultaeously along
the
coast. had this strategy succeeded, the
south
would have been overwhelmed and the war
lost to
the United States almost as soon as it
began.
That it failed, and the defeat of the
Tories at
King's Mountain took place, is due largely
to
Joseph MARTIN'S ability to persuade the
indians,
dominant among whom were the Cherokees who
were
his friends and relatives, not to aid the
British cause. his contribution was
recognized
by his associates and his superiors at the
time;
it is quite possible that Joseph MARTIN
would
today be looked onas one of the major
heroes of
the American Revolution had he operated in
a
more populous region where his deeds could
have
become more widely known, rather than on
the
remote and savage frontier, far from the
civilized centers of power and
communications.

Birth* 18 Sep 1740 Louisa Co., VA, USA.
Witness: __ ___ 1744 Co. Hist.: Albemarle Co., VA, USA;
Joseph's
son
William in his 1842 letter to DRAPER said
that
his father was "born in the year 1740 in
Albemarle Co., Virginia near
Charlottesville."
Albemarle Co wasn't formed until 1744 &
was
formed from Goochland & Louisa Cos.

War: __ ___ 1756 Fort Pitt, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Joseph was
reared in a violent area, during violent
times,
he grew up "overgrown, rude, and
ungovernable",
a rowdy bullying roughneck who refused to
attend
school and who ran away from the carpenter
to
whom he had been apprenticed by his father
to
learn a trade. He and his friend Thomas
SUMTER
(of South Carolina fame) some time in
1756/57
made their way through the wilderness to
Fort
Pitt (Pittsburgh) and enlisted in the
Army.
Witness: bt 17561757 History: Fort Pitt [Pittsburgh], Allegheney
Co.,
PA, USA; Joseph was reared in a violent
area,
during violent times, he grew up
"overgrown,
rude, and ungovernable", a rowdy bullying
roughneck who refused to attend school and
who
ran away from the carpenter to whom he had
been
apprenticed by his father to learn a
trade.
He
and his friend Thomas SUMTER (of South
Carolina
fame) some time in 1756/57 made their way
through the wilderness to Fort Pitt
(Pittsburgh)
and enlisted in the Army.

Residence: __ ___ 1762 Orange Co., VA, USA.
Anecdote: __ ___ 1762 In the early years Joseph MARTIN gambled
away
his father's inheritance and went into
debt. His
restless spirit could not be patient at
the
plow. His son, William, said he had "no
talents
for speaking or writing." His recognition
was
with the military where he was an
excellent
Indian agent. One of his friends in wild
younger
days was Benjamin CLEVELAND Joseph finally
paid
off all his debts and worked for 3
years as
overseer for a "rich relation named
MINOR."

Anecdote: a __ ___ 1762 He settled down as a farmer there.
However, his
boisterous way of life continued, and he
neglected his farming to indulge a passion
he
had developed for gambling at cards, he
lost his
inheritance & fell into debt. Shortly
after
the
French & Indian War he became acquainted
with
Elisha WALDEN, Will BLEVENS & John COX all
`Long
Hunters', this chance meeting changed his
life.
Their accounts of the wild and unexplored
country aroused the adventurer in Joseph &
their
reports of profits to be made in the fur
trade
offered him a chance to recover from debt.
He
joined with WALDEN and became a `Long
Hunter'.
The long hunters, in small groups of three
&
four men would set out in the fall of the
year
to their favorite hunting grounds
(locations
concealed) 100 miles or more beyond the
settlements. They took with them
packhorses,
traps, guns, powder, lead, bulletmolds,
tools
and afew repair parts for their weapons,
and a
small supply of flower and parched
wheat or
`rockahominy'." At the hunting ground they
established camps, which they shifted
every
few
weeks as the game became shy, staked out
their
trap lines, and remained in the wilderness
until
spring, when they returned to the
settlements
with theri pack horses loaded with deer
skins
and fur pelts of beaver, mink, otter,
raccoon,
bear, and other animals. The Shawnee were
to the
north and the Cherokee to the south and
they did
not like the invasion ot their trational
neutral
hunting grounds.
Settlement: c __ ___ 1767 Powells Valey; He was approached by Dr.
Thomas
WALKER, who had discovered & named
Powell's
Valley & the Cumberland Mountains and had
secured a large grant of land in the area.
He
asked Joseph to head a party to
establish a
`station' (fortified frontier post) in
Powell's
Valley. Joseph built the station
(consisting of
five or six strong cabins connected by a
loop
holed log palisade in a rectangular plan)
at
what became known as `Martin's Station'
(named
after him in present Lee Co., VA), on the
KY
Trace about 20 miles northeast of
Cumberland Gap
right off the Wilderness Trail. A crop was
put
in & parts of KY were explored, the post
had to
be abandoned because of the hostility of
the
Indians.
Anecdote: __ ___ 1767 Joseph's share of the profits from his
Long
Hunts was substantial and at the same time
his
luck at cards (assisted by his bullying
tactics
at the table) seems to have improved, he
succedded in paying off his debts and
aquired
several tracts of land. In 1767 Joseph &
CLEVELAND put in a crop of wheat on Pigg
River
(now Franklin Co., VA) but were too
improvident
to fence it in, losing much of the crop to
deer.
At harvest time they invited in their
friends
and neighbors to the reaping and
provided a
fiddler and a plentiful supply of whiskey
for
their entertainment. In the riotous party
all
the reapers got drunk and none of the crop
was
harvested. Joseph continued in this way
until
SUMPTER & CLEAVELAND moved from the area.

Residence: __ ___ 1773 Pittsylvania Co., VA, USA.

Moved* __ ___ 1773 Pittsylvania Co., VA, USA; Joseph took his
family in the fall of 1773 to Pittsylvania
Co.,
Virginia, he bought a tract of land on
Smith
River and built a home which he named
"Scuffle
Hill", because of the difficulty with
which
he
scratched a living from his rather rough
land.
His farm eventuall grew to nearly a
thousand
acres on the north side of the river
extending
from Hammack's Branch (near the end of
Lanier
Rd.) along the river to Rugg Creek (where
Rives
Rd Extension crossed the river) and north
to
apoint on a small branch of Mulberry
Creek.

War* __ ___ 1774 The Shawnee War erupted and Lord DUNMORE
on 25
Augest 1774 commissioned MARTIN a captain
in the
Pittsylvania militia. He was in charge of
the
Rangers (scouts) at Culbertson's Bottom on
New
River, to cover the Shawnee Pass through
the
mountains, and remained there until after
the
battle of Point Pleasan.

Marriage: c __ ___ 1775 Elizabeth WARD (17581800); Cherokee Nation
East, [now W TN, USA; When Joseph MARTIN
was
appointed Indian agent of the Cherokees
took a
young half bread Cherokee to wife
c1775, to
Elizabeth `Betsy' WARD, 1/2 Cherokee
Indian,
Cherokee Nation East (now East TN). She
was
the
daughter of Brian WARD & Nancy
"Nany'hi"/"GhiGau" WARD Betsy was born c
1758,
Cherokee Nation East and was still living
ca
1800 on a fine estate at the town of
Wakhovee on
the south side of the Hiwassee River 50
miles
from Tellico Blockhouse [260 miles from
Augusta,
GA] and was still called Mrs. MARTIN. She
lived
in a log house fully furnished on a well
stocked
farm and raised and spun cotton. She and
her
relatives lived for a time in Chota, a
town
located where the Tennessee and Holston
Rivers
meet. Betsy was the most distinguished
clan
of
the whole tribe, and one of the first
families
of that clan (for there was then, a marked
distinction between families among them as
in
civilized life). "With this woman he lived
the
greater part of his ling agency mostly at
the
Lond Island, but sometimes in the Nation.
Once
in a while he would go home to Virginia,
stay a
while and return. And strange as it may
seem, it
never produced any discord between him and
my
mother; such was her affection for him,
and
such
was his address that he quited all
concerned
except myself, his son William.
Settlement: bt 17751776 1775 he led a party into Powell's
Valley to
reestablish "Martin's Station" but was
unsuccessful because of the Indian
uprisings in
1776.

Witness: __ ___ 1776 History: Henry Co., VA, USA; Henry County,
created in 1776, was named in honor of the
great
orator of the Revolution,
Patrick Henry, who did so much to
overthrow
the
royal establishment in Virginia. Before
the creation of Henry County, counties
were
generally named in honor of some one
connected with the royal family of England
or
the royal government of the colonies.
Formed
from Pittsylvania County, the area of the
county
is 385 square miles and the county seat is
Martinsville.
Martinsville was named for Joseph Martin,
an
early settler and Revolutionary War
soldier
who represented Henry County in the
General
Assembly in 1791, when the town was
established. Martinsville was incorporated
as a
town in 1873 and became a city by court
order in 1928. Its area is 11.2 square
miles.
Parishes of the Established Church 1607
1785
When the first English settlers came to
Virginia
in 1607, they followed the familiar
patterns of the Church of England and
established parishes that served as local
units
of ecclesiastical and community
organization.
The General Assembly established parishes
and
fixed their boundaries, often at the same
time
that it created or altered county
lines. On
January 16, 1786, the General Assembly
passed
Thomas Jefferson's Bill for Establishing
Religious Freedom, ending stateenforced
support
for the formerly established church and
its
parishes Camden, 1776 1778
Patrick, 1778 1785.

Military: __ Aug 1776 Henry Co., VA, USA; As Capt. MARTIN was in
charge of a company of fifty militiamen
who
were
sent to the Holston River country, to help
build
a fort near the Long Island (where
Kingsport
lies), and took part in several successful
campaigns against those of the Cherokee
Towns
which had shown hostility to the
Americans.
Appointed: 03 Nov 1777 Henry Co., VA, USA; was made agent to the
Cherokee Indians by Gov. Patrick HENRY of
Virginia. he served as agent until 1789.
His
main base while agent was 2 miles from
Long
Island on the Holston river (NC) in
present
Sullivan Co., TN. He traveled back & forth
from
Henry Co., Virginia to Tennessee during
this
time.

Residence* __ ___ 1778 Martinsville, Henry Co., VA, USA; Sign in
front
of courthouse, Martinsville, named for
Joseph
Martin, pioneer who settled here in 1778,
in
1793 the courthouse of Henry County was
moved
her and the town was established. Patrick
Henry
for whom the county was named lived near
here
once..

Settlement* __ ___ 1783 Powells Valley, KY, USA; he was successful
in a
third attempt to establish a permanent
settlement in Powell's Valley,
safeguarding
the
passage of travellers along the Kentucky
Trace &
the Wilderness Road into Kentucky.

Appointed: __ May 1783 NC, USA; him its Agent for Indian Affairs
among
the Cherokee Towns.

Appointed: __ ___ 1784 State of Franklin [TN], USA; August 1784,
Col.
MARTIN was a member of the convention
called to
orgaize the State of Franklin from the
Tennesse
lands ceded by North Carolina to the
United
States but not yet accepted by the
Congress. He
opposed this move, and is credited with
playing
a major part in bringing about the
dissolution
of the State of Franklin, thereby
incurring
the
lasting enmity of his old friend and
Governor of
the new state, John SEVIER. SEVIER became
very
hostile toward him because of the part
Joseph
played in the disolution of the new state,
and
is believed to have been the instigator of
an
attempt by a party of about four
frontiersmen to
see him out & put him to capture or kill
him.
Joseph learned of this, armed himself to
the
teeth, and set out to meet the
advanceguard
of
eight or nine of the main party, and on
coming
up with them drew his pistol and announced
that
he would shoot the first one of them who
moved
his gun. The group protested that they had
not
plans against him, and accompained him
back
to
this station at the Lond Island, where
Joseph
set out a supply of whiskey for them. The
rest
of the party was then sent for, and the
whold
affair ended in a twoday revel.

Note: 01 Jan 1784 Among the records of the Moravians in
North
Carolina we find 1 Jan. 1784, people
arrived in
toquo, but Col. MARTIN forbade them to
sell
their brandy, he constantly urges the
Indians
not to sell their skins for brandy, but to
exchange them for necessities. Many are
enemies
of Col. MARTIN, on his journeys he has
need
to
be most careful, the only ground for the
hatred
is that he secured from the government an
act of
assembly, securing to the Cherokees the
land on
which they live, and will not allow other
people
to settle on their hunting grounds.

Marriage* 24 Feb 1784 Susannah GRAVES (17631837); Henry Co., VA,
USA.

<8>

Appointed: __ ___ 1785 by the Congress on the Commission to
conclude
treaties between the United States and the
Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, which
was
successfully accomplished.
Marriage: a __ ___ 1785 Mary EMORY; his 4th her 2nd.
Appointed: __ ___ 1787 Henry Co., VA, USA; to the North Carolina
Assembly from Sullivan Co. and in Dec.
commissioned by them as Brigadier General
of the
North Carolina militia in the Western
District,
which is now Tennessee. He also
traveled to
Georgia that year to negotiate a treaty
with the
Creek Nation.
Grant* 21 Jun 1787 Henry Co., VA, USA; on Rugg Creek
adjoining
his
own land, containing 435 acres.

Note: __ ___ 1789 Henry Co., VA, USA; In 1789 he returned to
Henry
Co. where he lived the remainder of his
life.
That year he also set up a trading post in
Georgia (in which he lost heavily) on a
tract of
land he had acquired. He was so well
though
of
by the Georgians that they elected him to
their
legislature. For the remaining 19 years he
visited in TN and GA and also helped
with a
Creek Indian treaty in GA.

Member: bt 17911799 Henry Co., VA, USA; (possibly later years
also)
as the representative from Henry Co. in
the
General Assembly of Vriginia.
Deed: 31 Oct 1791 Henry Co., VA, USA; from Stark BROWN for
£50, 50
acres on north side of Smith River. On 6
Dec
1791 a power of attorney from Brice MARTIN
to
Joseph MARTN to sell his lands in Russell
Co.
Powells Valley and to ttransact all his
business
in Henry Co. in his absence and to pay a
judgment by John Wallen of Caroline Co.,
VA.
Deed: 28 Jan 1792 Henry Co., VA, USA; from William GRAVES
for
£25
all of his father, William GRAVES Sr.
estate
which was willed to the said William
GRAVES.
Should the courts of or his mother Mary
GRAVES
rule the will unlawfull then the estate to
be
equally divided between the heirs of his
father.